[icespeed]

i write stories. many of them never ever ever get finished.

currently, im editing the storyline/theories for one of them, mndchldrn. any thoughts are welcome. or if you can't be bothered to think, then reactions would be nice.

okay, there's a bunch of superintelligent kids running away from a research institute. i realised this was a major scifi cliche about two half-drafts into the story. ill work out something for them, but i am not going into the mind-powers thing, or aliens.

there's also a black hole involved. originally it was a planet orbiting a plain black hole but i've done some research since then. i'm thinking either a planet/asteroid along with a whole bunch of other junk on the outer edge of the accretion disk around a black hole... though i don't have any figures and i don't know if it's possible for terrestrial bodies to survive any period of time in accretion disks.
Either that, or build a massive dyson sphere around the black hole and harness it's energy... dunno how that'll work either but i'm sure something will come up. Maybe like a secondary event horizon, where instead of an accretion disk around a rotating black hole, you get an accretion disk around a non-rotating black hole.

so, that's the basic theory, i'm still working out the plot.

[Nico]

Mmh well, I'm not very good or anything at that kind of stuff, but I doubt a planet can stay unarmed in the acretion disk:
the very existence of that disk means the black hole already has an influence on that area of space, so I suppose that on the very outer edge, the planet itself could stay physically unharmed, but the atmosphere might get sucked up slowly or something. Plus the orbit course of the planet would be probably altered as well.
Well I suppose.

edit: oh, yeah: "mndchldrn"?
I get children, well I guess, but mnd?

[icespeed]

maybe an asteroid or something, im not sure yet exactly.
since life on the planet itself is not an issue, im not particularly concerned with atmosphere... anyway, something small would get sucked into the sun if it was close enough. So same idea with a black hole, if the object's moving fast enough and far away enough, it should be able to orbit. Of course black holes are unstable anyway, so...

the original idea was for kids with mind powers, but im changing that, like i said.

[Eishtmo]

The best way to get stories done, I've found, is to find a reason to finish them, and force yourself.  The best reason is to post it on a forum for others to read and comment.  Then you almost feel like you have to finish it or people will scream and cry.

As for your story, are you taking into account the time dilation effects of being so close to a black hole?  Also where does the planet get it's energy from?  There's no star or other source of radiation to keep them alive (it all gets sucked into a black hole).  Dyson spheres are nice, but they'd be torn apart by the gravitational field of the black hole unless they're really, really big.  It might be better to steer completely clear of black holes as they're pretty nasty things to deal with.

I suggest you decide what you want to focus on, and go from there.  The black hole, the mind powers or whatever, just pick one and let the rest grow from there.  You'll probably find that your original idea isn't worth expanding on by the time you're done.

[an0n]

If you build a Dyson Sphere around a black-hole it'd act just like a Romulan Warbird's power-core.

And if you're talking about someone powerful and/or advanced enough to build a Dyson Sphere then little things like gravitational stress aren't going to be much a problem.

You could build the sphere, have crap get pulled down to the surface, then have the sphere periodically open parts of its surface to allow all the impacted matter to flow into the black-hole, resulting in a release of collectable energy.

Simple.

[Ghostavo]

Except that a Dyson sphere had to be perfectly alined with the center of the black-hole or else...

Anything within the gravitational pull of a black hole (much less accretion disks) will be totally f***** in no time (even taking the time dilations in thought).

And for a planet to be near a black hole is a rather... er... extreme possibility because if a planet was formed in the area (meaning a star had been there), the resulting formation of the black-hole (supernova?) would have blasted the planet to smitherins!!